LUXList Designer Edition | Sardar Design

Sardar Design has a wealth of experience behind them – having designed worldwide – including Egypt, Marrakech and New York for both residential and commercial properties. The studio is a collective environment, spearheaded by Ahmad Sardar Afkhami, who has a background in both landscaping and architecture. The studio’s pool of talented designers – specializing in everything from landscaping, architecture, and interior design – approach every project with originality and adaptability. The breadth of strengths and specialties of the team members mean no design is beyond the bounds of possibility. Discover more about ourLUXList Designer’s inspiration and aesthetic! See their favorite pieces from RubyLUX.com.

Sardar Design worked with local craftsmen for the restoration of this Marrakech home.

Describe your design aesthetic in a few words?

I like to work with the context of the project. If it is an addition to an existing design, I try to find a very concise and updated expression of it for the new additions. If I work from scratch I’m usually inspired by a detail that strikes me as special, for example, a color, or the way light enters a room, the way a building relates to its surrounding. I think one needs to be alert and open. The project site will dictate the beginning chords, and one just runs with it.

What do you love about using antiques in your designs?

I love antiques because they carry the memory of people and families with them. Even when one acquires antiques from elsewhere they bring to the project a layering and nuance that is otherwise lost.

What inspires you?

Beauty, and kindness. Patience and humor. Respect and courage.

A townhouse restoration of a West Village, Manhattan home in collaboration with Nate Berkus.

What is one of your favorite pieces in your home?

I have a pair of etched Sterling Horse stirrups inlaid in gold that belonged to a magnificent Pasha in Fes. I use it to keep my mail organized….Sic transit gloria mundi.

What are some details of your signature style?

The mixing of styles, of colors, and of materials.

What can you never have enough of?

Whimsy and sense of humor are very important in life, and in design, it helps keep things light and sparkling. Perfection, on the other hand, is something to always strive towards, and never achieve

If you could design for a fictional character who would it be? Why?

Hmmm…so difficult to choose. I’d like it to be someone with a lot of hidden facets, surprising depths, not necessarily always pleasant, but intriguing. I want to say the evil one in Milton’s Paradise Lost, but I don’t think that will go down very well….how about the count of Monte Cristo, and on top of it he’s a self-made man so he knows how to have fun with his money, or a great seducer like Don Juan, that uses physical space to seduce.

A fast-growing Manhattan digital agency enlisted the firm’s expertise in order to design their office space.

Sardar Design Studio is a multidisciplinary studio for architecture, landscape architecture, and design founded in 2005 in New York City.

The body of our work is as diverse as our members, ranging from contemporary residences and workplaces to the restoration of historical townhouses, to the planning of urban green spaces and gardens. Key to our practice is the fostering of a collaborative environment among team members with diverse professional experiences. Our studio is comprised mainly of architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and interiors professionals. From this background, small teams are put together to best fulfill the unique potential of each project by providing innovative solutions backed by rigorous research and analysis of traditional architecture, contemporary building practices, and natural processes.

Our diverse portfolio of local and international projects all reflect a radical rethinking of the conventional aspects of architecture and design. By questioning traditional influences and solutions, we strive to come up with new and unexpected spaces and products that are better adapted to the life and demands of our clients, yet respective of historical and vernacular forms.

Our current projects include: The refurbishment and addition to an existing Shingle-style house in Sagaponack, Long Island, The New York offices of the Government of Dubai Investment arm, The restoration of a 19th century townhouse in the West Village area of New York City, various garden projects in and around New York City, The restoration of an historical 18th Century mud-brick complex in Morocco. A new contemporary family home in Amman, Jordan, and strategic planning for a public green space adapted to the desert conditions of southern Morocco.

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Ahmad Sardar Afkhami was born in Teheran to a family of architects and designers. After leaving Iran during the upheaval of the revolution, he spent his childhood in France and England where he was deeply influenced by the French love of analytical rigor, especially as it is applied to an artistic expression.

After graduating from Brown University with a Bachelor’s degree in Semiotics/Modern Culture and Media in 1990, he spent some time in India working on a film project that documented gender politics in traditional Northern Indian Architecture and Landscape design.

His interest sparked by this project, he pursued a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. Upon graduating in 1995, and after researching the restoration of a historical French garden of the 17th century, he worked for Robert AM Stern as a Landscape architect. Frustrated by the limits imposed on his profession, he returned to school to obtain a Master’s Degree in Architecture from Columbia University in 1999. He then worked as an architect for Robert AM Stern and other prestigious architectural firms based in New York City.

In 2005, he founded Sardar Design Studio as an attempt to bring together the different aspects of his design career and to create a collaborative studio where different design professionals with similarly wide-ranging interests could practice in a mutually supportive atmosphere on projects that overlap and challenge the traditional boundaries of design as practiced today.